Welcome to Doggerland

The above photo is from a tourist website entitled, 'Five Reasons to Visit Dungeness'. I don't think that my parents used any of them as an excuse for the holiday they took me on at the age of 3 or 4.

There are a few things which really stick in my memory about the strange stay in Dungeness. Two of them are in this photo, but one is in disguise.

My mother took me on that train and - as in the photo - it ran past that lighthouse. The the problem is that I distinctly remember the lighthouse to have been painted in black and white stripes. Perhaps someone could tell me if I am making this up as a false memory? If not then I think the stripes could have been a war-time measure, like 'Dazzle' painting on ships. Having said that, they would not have turned the light on for the  whole war anyway. I'm confused.

I remember the windswept desolation of the place too, and even at that age I wondered why anyone would take a small child to it for a holiday. Our little hut-like house was in amongst the dunes, and we had to dig the sand away from the door to get back in after windy walks on the beach. If it were not for the coarsely tufted grass on the miles of dunes, the entire house would have been completely buried. "I am sure this is where it was this morning..."

My father had to leave me and my mother alone for most of the time, possibly to look after the sweet shop he ran near the Devil's Punchbowl, and possible took look after my older sisters and brother. It is also possible that they were deliberately spending time apart - they went through a few tribulations that I was unaware of at the time, apart from the melancholy miasmas which sometimes gathered around the immediate area of my mother, which were not even dispersed by the relentless wind of Dungeness.

What I did not realise at the time was that Dungeness's whole atmosphere has been created by its geographical position in history. It has been under the threat of attack since Doggerland was submerged, turning Britain into Great Britain, the mainland being the largest of a series of islands. If Doggerland had not sunk we would not be in the Brexit mess that we are now, but then again German might be our first language.

One really good reason to visit Dungeness is to see the group of WW2 concrete listening devices which formed part of a complex of stations along that stretch of the South Coast. See the photo below.

Each dish or arc had a microphone set in the middle, and could pick up very small sounds emanating from the coast of France. An invasion would have been quite loud, with the steady thumping of ship's engines.

I have a friend who was brought up near them, and he said that even today, if you position your head in the right place of a curved concrete wall or dish, you can hear the traffic noise in France.

I love all the innovation of the pre-digital Second World War. All those boffins like Barnes Wallis messing about on the South Coast in Wellingtons.